Powers of Evil:
Player 2: Mordor (Aztecs)
Player 4: Isengard (Celts)
Player 6: Goblins of the North (Goths)
Player 8: Harad and Umbar (Persians)

You can choose different civilizations if you want to in the game lobby.
Also, I suggest locking teams.

Middle Earth - Nomad
Version 1,1

Play on the same map, but with no buildings. Starting units are transport ships with scouts and villagers.

Computer players will disembark their units at fixed locations to build a town, but human players can send their transports wherever they want to explore the world.
You do not need to enable all 8 players.

Middle Earth - Free Play
Version 1,1

Similar to nomad, but with fixed starting positions with TC, villagers and scout.

I originally created this to have a computer-capable version of nomad. However, I was able to get the nomad map to work with computer players using triggers and I much prefer being able to chose where to set up my base.

It's not playable at all. Where are the units? The players start with next to no units and it is considered the War of the Ring. The War of the Ring was a war that contained nearly a million beings (orcs, humans, dwarves, elves, evil men, Umbar, Dunland, Uruks, trolls, etc.. If they have no units, then how is it playable?

Balance: 2
The Free People start with 0 units (other than a few heroes) and the evil people get a strong army at start. It's not balanced. The forces of evil could easily attack and destroy the forces of good and win. The map should be easily winnable by both sides, evenly.

Creativity: 1
Is it creative? Not really. The heroes have no hp or ap given to them (added on), so they are not much stronger than regular units. The units' names are not spelled right. Such as the "wargs" that are spelled "wrag". And why are there 14 rings? There were 7 for dwarves, 3 for elves, and 9 for men --- that makes 19 rings not 14. And there was also Sauron's ring, so that makes 20. While it does look nice, it paid little attention to creativity.

Map Design: 2
The map was designed well as far as scenery, but when it comes to units and heroes and armies, it was neglected. The people have nothing to fight with. They have to spend quite a long time creating armies and farming for resources. Almost every other LOTR map has huge armies given to you at the start and you don't have to gather resources or build men. They spawn for you!

Story/Instructions: 2
It had some instructions, but they were minimal. How about some dialogs or a story within the instructions! Tell us what is going on!

Additional Comments:
It was made well as far as scenery, but the units, heroes, armies, and the ap/hp and balance problems need to be fixed.

ZetnusFile Author

Posted on 01/25/14 @ 08:51 AM

@yodathekiller13 - thanks for your review (even if the results are hardly flattering)

This was among the very first maps I did, and I've seen some better-made once since. I can see where a lot of your criticism comes from, and a some of it certainly justified, but not all of it:

> Playability - yes, you don't start with a huge imperial-age army, but you don't start with no units either - every player starts with some villagers, a few military units, and a few heroes (or more military, if they don't have heroes). It might not have been the amount of military that you expected, but that in itself hardly renders it unplayable. At some point I made a version where good and evil each started with over 1000 units, but that was almost unplayable because of the constant attack bells almost immediately after starting the game - so I opted for a slower start with fewer units.

> Balance - no one starts with a lot less units than anyone else (The Free People have the strongest starting fleet, for example) nevertheless, I agree it's probably not balanced, and I didn't spend much time balance testing.

> Creativity - Spelling mistakes: I'm sorry about those and will get them fixed in future versions.

"The heroes have no hp or ap given to them (added on), so they are not much stronger than regular units" --- not every hero got extra HP or AP, but many of the important ones did (check out Gandalf or the Nazgul or Gollum or Elrond, or buildings like Dol Guldur)

14 Rings - Nowhere do I say there are 14 rings. I say "capture AT LEAST 14 rings of power ...". Actually, there are 19(+1) rings on the map. However, they are widely dispersed and hard to find, so a victory condition based on collecting all of them would unrealistically difficult, so I decided that getting 14 of 19(+1) was about the right number to make it worthwhile to hunt down the rings, while not making it too easy.

nevertheless, the map could use more creativity in the Story/Instructions area

Map design - All of what you say is true, although you might be focusing too much on playability for a criterion that also the encompasses aesthetic quality of the map.

Story/Instructions - yup I agree, there's not much of a story and not much triggerwork besides changing names and HP/AP of units. In fact, this is where I see the most scope of improving things (plus balance maybe).

Sorry, I just felt that I had to defend my work at least against the criticisms that were unwarranted or overly subjective.

In any case, thanks for taking your time to review this map, your feedback will be used to make improvements.

Basse

Posted on 01/25/14 @ 05:30 PM

The map design was definitely pretty good! A good map of Middle Earth, one of the better ones I've seen!

panelOfficial Reviewer

Posted on 01/26/14 @ 07:35 AM

yodathekiller, I agree with Basse and Zetnus in that you were a bit too harsh on the map design category and that you should reconsider. The units shouldn't come into play that much when judging map design, that category judges the aesthetic quality of the game more than anything else, and it seems to me that you haven't given that quality enough credit. Besides, you've already mentioned the problems you had with units in the other categories.

Also, if you don't update your review, I believe that Zetnus should be entitled to ask it to be removed.

[Edited on 01/26/14 @ 07:37 AM]

ZetnusFile Author

Posted on 01/28/14 @ 01:41 PM

Of course it would definitely be preferable to have an updated review; but otherwise I would like to ask to have it removed, since I fear people might be put off from downloading this map because of the rating, even though the map itself isn't quite that bad.

EDIT - Looking back I see that my map, while being good, is hardly spectacular. I've seen a few that are noticeably better - especially in relation to cliff placement.

Nevertheless, the review given really doesn't do the map justice.
It's been a long time since I've looked at it (it was one of my very first projects) so at this point I'm not inclined to make any sort of fuss. I know I could do better now (given time) and if I were to come back to this map I might well want to remake it from scratch.